Northern Kyrgyzstan

Okay, after all our heavy traveling of the last week or two (as outlined in my previous post), we made it to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan has been a welcome relief as it is the cheapest of the central Asian countries and yet still very pleasant. Anyway, we arrived and immediately ran into a serious motivation problem as a group. We had only planned on a day or 2 before heading off to the countryside but it took us 4 just to get out of town. On one day we got up, packed, looked outside, saw it start to rain then sat back down and played cards for the rest of the day! Oh the joy of laziness!
Bishkek was a bit surprising. It is very green, with tons of parks in the center. It almost seems to be more park than anything else. I don't know where the commercial center is (or if there even is one). In the center they have the parliament building, big museum and ex-Lenin square, the odd shopping center, tons of outdoor cafes and blocks and blocks of parks. There's not even much traffic on the streets. For the first time since Mongolia we were able to sit in a restaurant and eat too.
Don't know what it was for but they had a big military parade rehearsal going on while we were running around one of the days. The only problem has been the thunderstorms that keep coming by all the time but they are entertaining so we won't complain too much.
Intercity traffic here is a bit whacked too. They don't really have buses like we think of them but just minibuses that leave whenever they are full (or feel like it) which can mean long waits or you have to get a long-distance taxi. From Bishkek we went to Song Kul lake for some more R+R in a more natural setting. Kyrgyzstan is almost nothing but mountains (so far they've all been devoid of vegetation) and our lake was up at 3000m (10000ft) so we froze our butts off (it was 5C) playing cards in our yurt (like a mongolian ger) waiting for all the thunderstorms to pass. Things are very basic and not as well set up for tourists like in Mongolia. Mongolians always live in gers. Only kyrgyz shepherds live in yurts and that is only during the summer months when they take their herds up to the high pastures. Thus the yurts are much more temporary and LEAK when the rains hit. Spent 3 days up there (1 of which we just sat around watching Bre be sick) others by the lake or riding.
I need never ride a horse again. Savannah explained it perfectly, it doesn't get any better. We are now back in Bishkek again but are heading south tomorrow to Osh for a few days then on to Kashgar in China.
Ammon